Parashorea Kurz

Large trees with large, rounded, slightly concave, hardly branched plank buttresses. Crown dense, becoming dome-shaped or hemispherical, even, the branchlets usually crowded towards the ends but not 'cauliflower' shaped; main branches several to many, radiating from the bole apex (except in P. macrophylla). Bark surface distinctly mauve-grey to purplish, with narrow shallow fissures, broad smooth or flaking flat ridges, and numerous conspicuous large pale corky lenticels. Stipules linear to hastate, fugaceous. Leaves broadly oblong-ovate, shortly acuminate; nerves scalariform, with subpersistent plicate folding; no intermediate nerves; young leaves white beneath. Inflorescence racemose (except P. macrophylla). Flower and fruit as in Shorea, but sepals in bud ± equal, very narrowly imbricate. Petals falling separately. Stamens 15, much longer than ovary in bud; filaments short, dilated and compressed at base, tapering abruptly and filiform below anthers; anthers narrowly oblong, with 4 pollen sacs, the inner 2 shorter than outer 2; appendage to connective hardly exceeding anther apex, not reflexed, stout. Ovary small, +-ovoid, shortly pubescent, with or without a slender stylopodium; style as long as or longer than ovary, filiform, glabrous. Fruit pedicel short. Fruit calyx lobes either ± spatulate, slender, thickened and saccate at the valvate base, frequently subequal, 3 somewhat larger than the other 2, or shorter than nut, equal; pushed apart by the ripening nut. Nut large, globose, pubescent, verrucose-lenticellate; style remnant short, indistinct. Germination as in Shorea, but with seedling leaves at first linear, quite unlike the peltate sapling leaves.

Local, sometimes abundant, in lowland Mixed and Semi-evergreen Dipterocarp forests, and occasionally hills to 1400 m.

Uses. An important pale coloured light hardwood exported from the Philippines and N.W. Borneo.